Consortia initiatives in cataloguing, bibliographic and indexing services in Nigeria

Abstract

The paper examines the factors which are critical to the emergence of consortia efforts in cataloguing, bibliographic and indexing services. It focuses on the management and methodological issues essential to the evolution of a functional consortium in Nigeria. A methodological framework for a functioning consortium is proposed. Key factors discussed include management and operational framework, administration and managing resources. Others are funding and infrastructure. The paper highlights the emergence of consortia in Nigeria partly because of the rising costs and complexities of information resources, and decreasing budgets, while at the same time providing the user community with optimal access to needed information. The mission of consortia, consortia efforts in cataloguing, bibliography and indexing as well as Union, Virtual and Shared system catalogues are examined as the possible products of the consorting partners. The paper recommends that the cataloguer is a critical variable in the computational equation designed to evolve consortia in cataloguing, bibliography and indexing services. The challenge however, is to leverage ICT in the evolutionary process.